Armalite style rifles (ARs) are a very popular shooting platform for shooting enthusiasts around the world. The AR style platform can be easily customized to accommodate any user's preferences. One such popular customization is an AR style upper and lower receivers designed to shoot pistol caliber rounds.
The pistol caliber ARs have a number of weaknesses. On of these is the lack of a bolt stop or bolt catch feature that prevents the bolt and the bolt carrier assembly from moving forward to battery upon firing and ejecting the last round from the ammunition feeding device or magazine. This shortcoming often leads to the users unanticipated running out of ammunition unless the user counts the number of bullets fired from the magazine. In most cases, this results in a dry fire, where the trigger is pulled on an empty chamber. This slows down the operators response time to refresh the firearms magazine. Not having a bolt stop or bolt catch feature deviates from the standard AR manual of arms.
What is needed is a system that can prevent the bolt carrier from moving forward upon firing/ejecting of the last round of ammunition thereby mimicking the standard operation and manual of arms of AR style rifles.
In the following description, like reference numbers are used to identify like elements. Furthermore, the drawings are intended to illustrate major features of exemplary embodiments in a diagrammatic manner. The drawings are not intended to depict every feature of every implementation nor relative dimensions of the depicted elements, and are not drawn to scale.